Brussels takes aim at the Famous Five! Books portraying 'traditional' families could be barred … Books that reinforce traditional roles can contribute to gender stereotyping, report says Traditional stories can damage women's career opportunities, report's authors says Books which portray 'traditional' images of mothers caring for their children or fathers going out to work could be barred from schools under proposals from Brussels. An EU report claims that 'gender stereotyping' in schools influences the perception of the way boys and girls should behave and damages women's career opportunities in the future. Critics said the proposals for 'study materials' to be amended so that men and women are no longer depicted in their traditional roles would mean the withdrawal of children's classics, such as Enid Blyton's The Famous Five series, Paddington Bear or Peter Pan. – UK Daily Mail

Dominant Social Theme: People need to let other people alone, even if Leviathan itself must be employed to make it happen.

Free-Market Analysis: Whenever we look, we are assaulted by unbelievable legislative actions. This has got to be the most incredible idea yet: To legislate portrayals of the family out of existence.

What kinds of people come up with these ideas? What kind of people vote on them? This is not some outlier in North Korea, not some gambit in Mongolia. This initiative is being seriously proposed in the heart of the West, in the supposed cradle of civilization.

These people are not just announcing their intentions to attack the family unit, but to ban by force any mention of it. It's a little bit like trying to legislate away gravity. Human biology trends towards families. Here's more from the article:

The document, prepared by the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, also suggests EU-wide legislation is needed to tackle the way women are depicted in advertising during children's television programmes.

It further complains about the number of women in EU parliaments, and floats the idea of fixed quotas on a minimum proportion of female MPs.

The report says: 'Children are confronted with gender stereotypes at a very young age through television series, television advertisements, study materials and educational programmes, influencing their perception of how male and female characters should behave.

'Special educational programmes and study materials should therefore be introduced in which men and women are no longer used in examples in their 'traditional roles', with the male as the breadwinner of the family and the female as the one who takes care of the children.'

The report adds: 'With reference to media and advertisement, it must also be noted that unsupervised television viewing among children and youngsters starting at a very early age is on the rise. 'Negative gender stereotypes can therefore have a significant influence on young women's confidence and self- esteem, particularly on teenagers, resulting in a restriction of their aspirations, choices and possibilities for future career possibilities.'

The document calls on the European Commission to 'take the issue of gender equality into account in all policy fields.' Tim Aker, spokesman for Get Britain Out, a Eurosceptic campaign group, warned: 'If the EU has its way, millions of youngster would be denied the pleasure of reading childhood classics such as Paddington Bear, Peter Pan or the Tiger Who Came to Tea because these books show mums and dads in so-called traditional roles.

The article goes on to point out the ludicrousness of this sort of legislation. "The Eurozone is crumbling, millions are out of work and a generation of young Europeans face a bleak future. Yet the EU is spending its time concentrating on how to socially engineer our children."

In all fairness, the proposals are not expected to become Euro-law any time soon, but they do amply illustrate the darkness at the center of the EU experiment, snuffing out human decency the way a black hole supposedly sucks heat out of the galaxy.

And then there is this: "The policy, championed by EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding, would make it mandatory for all publicly traded companies to fill 40 per cent of seats on their boards with women by 2020 or face hefty fines."

Not only are Eurocrats determined to censure mention of families; they are going to legislate gender preferences at the highest level of corporate enterprise.

We truly have gotten to the point, long ago actually, where anything that can make it into law BECOMES the law. For millennia this was not the case. Natural law was OBSERVABLE and what man proposed hewed to natural law or was discarded. This was the basic tenet of original common law.

Only in these sophisticated times has it become fashionable to accept that the "law" comes from legislatures. Thus, if the "law" were to mandate that people needed to walk on their hands rather than on their feet, so long as enough votes were available, such legislation could be passed.

The saving grace of all this is that trees do not grow to the sky. At some point we anticipate a return, at least a modest one, to the private law about which we often write. Totalitarianism never provides us with a stable system. Too much has to be repressed, which makes it untenable in the long run.

Political systems, like the body of laws itself, must respect the nature of human beings or are bound to fail. This is one reason why authoritarian systems end up murdering so many people when enforcement of various anti-human legislation becomes impossible.

Viewed from this perspective, lights are flashing amber on the EU dashboard. As EU legislation becomes ever more Draconian and illusory, the likelihood of "accidents" increases. The EU was supposedly conceived of to ensure that European genocide was never again used as a political option. But legislation such as this, attacking the essence of human existence, is not just profoundly inhuman; it shows us that the minds that create it can surely contemplate genocide as well, justifying the means to accomplish what they consider a laudable end.

It is also possible to see these proposals within the context of deliberate provocations. The dominant social theme here is obviously one of "tolerance" – of the legislated variety. (Only the state can protect individual rights.) But the subdominant social theme might actually be one of deliberate incitement, the idea that the EU can go as far as it wants in disseminating illiberal and nonsensical legislation.

It seems increasingly clear that the top Eurocrats, their plans exposed and in tatters, have decided on deliberate authoritarianism to show clearly to Europe's suffering middle classes that they don't have a choice: Brussels intends to control their living standards and will rule, like Kings of old, by decree.

After Thoughts

The upshot has already been a bloody wave of violence across Europe's PIGS. Arrogant legislation like this provides clues of more to come.